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The key question here is what is HR responsible
for? Is it hiring and firing, the appraisals process, pay reviews
and so on, and the answer is most definitely yes. Is HR responsible
for leadership, motivation, and the corporate culture? Well if not,
then who is? If then, HR is responsible for organisational culture;
it is possible to see how the three issues identified by Jack Welch
can be dealt with.
There is now sufficient evidence to show that a
strong adaptive culture adds substantially to bottom line profits.
In fact the identification of corporate culture as a ‘real’ part of
what makes companies tick’ goes back a quarter of a century now to
such business classics as ‘In Search of Excellence’ by Tom Peters
and Robert Waterman. As Peter’s said later he wanted to prove how
crucial people are to business success, and to release business from
the 'tyranny of the bean counters'.
Research and writing on organisational culture
have moved on over time, and the current view is that a ‘strong
adaptive culture’ is what is required to add significant value to a
company. So if this is accepted as the case, why isn’t everyone
feverishly trying to establish such a culture in their organisations?
The answer is that people have been trying to
build ‘strong adaptive cultures’ for quite a long time, but perhaps
without knowing it and by a different name. The mission, vision and
values so carefully put together by practically everyone over the
last decade or so are cases in point. Often these are owned not by
the HR Director, but by the CEO which explains some of the reason’s
behind ‘Jack’s issues’.
After all, isn’t ‘vision’ the prerogative of the
CEO? It could be, but when you get to ‘values’ you are most
definitely in the realm of ‘culture’. At this point the CEO would
probably be quite happy to hand this over to HR as the correct
people to carry this forward.
Here comes the interesting part, once you are
dealing with values you can most definitely ‘measure’, or more
accurately ‘assess’ them, using tools which already exist. It is
possible, in fact quite easy, to assess individual’s personal
values, their views on what they believe to be the current
organisational values, and what they would view as their desired
organisational values.
It is also possible to assess leadership values,
to assess what your customer’s view as your values. It is possible
to establish whether there are mismatches or conflicts, whether the
stated company values are indeed the ones by which the organisation
lives.
As an example the Australian ANZ Bank has been on
a cultural transformation programme for the last five years and
assesses its staff’s values annually. During this period it has
achieved 15%+ profit growth and is well recognised as being one of
the best managed and most efficient banks in the world.
So, if HR wants to take up its “position of power
and primacy in the organisation” it should take full responsibility
for the organisational culture, it should find the means by which to
assess and develop this culture. There is sufficient evidence around
to prove that this is a tangible, measurable and very real part of
moving the organisation forward and making it more successful than
ever before.
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